It's all fun until someone asphyxiates on a dried grape.

But that's what I'm asking - if something looks like a game, why it's not a game?

But even if you play poker for fun and not for money, if you play and win - you recieve money. You can't call in useless, can you? Or is it still work?

So sports are not games, nor is tag, cops and robbers, etc? Actually, education seems to be the one universal feature when you dig into the psychology. See my first post on this topic.

I would argue that there are no such games. Bring me any example of a game and I'll point out some metric that shows your success. In Tetris it's score, in SimSity it's your money, in various MMO it's your character's stats and equipment, maybe even your own fame among other players - all that you strive to achieve in game can be considered a goal.

Journey without goal. Must have a killer ending.
(Sam Flynn inspects his father's library with Quorra, for those playing along at home.)

No.

I'd say game is

1) an activity that consists of (series of) actions defined by the game maker

2) a thing that exists only for the purpose of enjoying its existence.

No No No

Duke Nukem Forever is definitely a game, but I have yet to meet anyone who enjoys it's existence. :P

Haha, yes, but seriously, food is food even if you wouldn't eat that kind of food.

Games are games, because they are meant for entertainment and enjoyment, whether anyone actually likes a certain game is another matter.

I'd say enjoying is an important condition here, which sets games apart from simulators. Not that simulators can't be fun and enjoyable, but that's not their main purpose. And I don't mean game simulators here, but professional simulators, which people use to actually simulate something, like flying a plane or driving a racing car.

I'd argue that being (intended to be) fun is not a requirement for something to be a game. After all, something doesn't need to be pleasant to listen to to quaify as "music" (see, for example, the music of Charles Ives (or perhaps John Cage?), though I'd argue that much of the music that's popular these days might qualify), so why should games need to be fun?

Examples of games that weren't made with fun in mind:
* Takeshi's Challenge
* Standardized testing programs (I would say they qualify as games)
* The simulators you mention, which I would consider to be games (they are, in a sense, not that different from simulations that are meant to be fun; such game simulators have more in common with professional simulators than they do with most other types of games).

Is Progress Quest a game?

Is Cookie Clicker a game?

Both those works could be considered idle "games", but while the second one (Cookie Clicker) is very clearly a game, is Progress Quest?

(In Progress Quest, once you get past character creation, the game plays itself with no input from the player.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagpag

For some people, pagpag is food, but for some others, pagpag is not food.

It depends on what the goal is. If you do it for leisure, then sport is a game. If you start for the Premier League or Olympics, sport is a profession. I you train to get better, it's training, not part of the game.

My definition may be different from others, but I think it's quite consistent.

such as?

I do not agree with Juul, all games have a goal of some sort, though they may not be explicitly told to you. It can be small, or easy, or player created, but for a player to sit and play a game there is a goal there. Even the most open games, such as Minecraft, has goals - survive the night, kill the ended dragon, make diamond armor, build a great building and so on. these are goals.